Article

Metonymies of Society and Culture in South Asia

2(2) 233–255
Fear: Islamophobia © 2016 South Asian University,
New Delhi
SAGE Publications
and the Making of sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2393861716643874
Muslim Identity in http://scs.sagepub.com

Hindi Cinema

Sanjeev Kumar H.M.1

Abstract
The paper begins with the contention that Hindi Cinema reflects a
sharp bias towards the principle of monoculturalism while representing
Muslims. This bias manifests in the trajectory of Islamophobic narratives,
represented in its reductionist employment of Muslims as a synecdoche
to signify a terrorist, religious extremist, Pakistan loyalist, anti-Hindu and
a traitor. Such narratives can be situated within the subtext of Hindu
majoritarianism and its monocultural agenda that visualises Muslims
as barbaric fanatics. To understand this, the paper makes a discourse
analysis of selected films produced by Bollywood since 1990s, for
examining as to how Hindi cinema is engaged in representing Muslims as
a metonymy for fear. Through films such as Fanaa, Kurbaan and New York,
that have engaged in the cultural discourse of good Muslims and bad
Muslims, or films like Shaurya, Sarfarosh and Charas, which have presented
the imagery of Indian Muslim security officers’ softness towards Islamic
radicals, the analysis in the paper takes into cognisance the context
of majoritarian Hindu setting in which the stories of Hindi cinema are
situated, and demonstrate as to how Muslim as a metaphoric figure of
violence, barbarism and treason is constructed.

Keywords
Muslims, Islamophobia, Hindu majoritarianism, Hindi cinema,
Bollywood, identity

1
Department of Political Science, Social Science Building, University of Delhi, Delhi,
India.

Corresponding author:
Sanjeev Kumar H.M., Professor, Room No. 19, IInd Floor, Department of Political Science,
Social Science Building, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007, India.
E-mail: [email protected]
234 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

Introduction
The social spaces of minorities and issues concerning their identity have
emerged as critical components in the contemporary discourses on the
linkages between culture and politics. Culture has invariably influenced
the course of politics since a long time and similarly politicisation of
cultural issues has also become an inevitable part of our public life. The
debate between majority versus the minority, assertions of the cultural
superiority of the majority, demonisation of the minority culture, crisis
of identity encountered by the minorities and the political use of cultural
symbols to differentiate between we versus others and define the concept
of nationhood in terms of majoritarian ideology. All this forms part of the
reciprocative process of interaction that involve the influence of culture
on the trajectory of politics and the politicisation of the contours of
cultural space itself. This brings to the fore, the understanding of culture
as a supreme motivational force that operates in various spheres of
people’s life. Clipped to this, the necessity of deconstructing the role of
politics, defined in terms of a process wherein human beings regulate
their group activities, assumes primacy. What is crucial here is the
necessity to interrogate as to whether politics acts as a tool of fractious
intervention in tailoring the subtle nuances of cultural trajectories in
favour of a particular group.
In this regard, it may be stated that such interventions happen through
complex processes of political mobilisation that has been facilitated by
the massification of cultural forms leading to the emergence of diverse
patterns of popular culture which tend to create fertile grounds for this
purpose. Popular culture represents a synonymous interpretation of mass
culture wherein a large section of people of a society, cutting across class
barriers, go through a collective experience. The sources of this experience
emanate from different directions, but there is a kind of intermingling of
multiple sources of origin that happens in a complementary manner. This
brings into the collective experience, a symmetrical feeling of common
tastes that tends to intertwine together the members of the collectivity
into a form of an organic ensemble and create a sense of coeval among
them. Mass media, especially the electronic ones, with their transnational
sweep and influence have emerged as crucial agents in structuring this
entire process (Kumar 2013: 458). This gets reflected through creative
art and literature, performing arts, folk forms, food/drink, dress and
cinema. Despite such diversified images, popular culture acquires a
nature of pervasiveness and interconnectedness. It is this type of a feature
Kumar H.M. 235

that seems to have made popular culture as the most effective turf upon
which intense interplay of culture and politics is being staged.
Particularly, in this regard, cinema has assumed a crucial role by
virtue of its pervasive mass appeal and its ability to deeply push itself
into the popular psyche and create a penetrative impact upon the
thinking and imagination of people (ibid.). With the technological boom
and widespread commercialisation of the film industry, cinema has
been rapidly acquiring a central position in the realm of studies relating
to popular culture. This is because it has proved to be one of the best
mechanisms that not only reflects the contemporary trends in popular
culture, but also plays a critical role in shaping the same. Due to such
an overbearing influence, cinema also acts as capacious cultural space
for politicians, reactionary ideologues and the defenders of a particular
social belief system to reconstruct and reinterpret the archaeologies of
the imaginary world built in the celluloid, in a manner that suits their
own agenda. While engaging in such reconstruction, they peep through
the cinematic world and establish linkages between the filmic world
created by cinematography and the broader historical and socio-political
meanings that largely remain contested in the public sphere.
In doing this, their attempt is to situate the subtext of socio-political
and ideological contests within the deep spaces vacant between the lines
of a film’s story. The cultural boundaries between communities is one
such fertile ground for inviting intrusive practices of interpretations of
the subtle nuances that criss-cross through the map of a film’s setting. In
India, such intrusions take place in circumstances wherein the question of
defining the cultural boundaries of the Hindu majority and its protection
from alien interventions are involved. Here, the definition of that alien
and the non-Hindu other has been categorical, with Muslims being
visualised as the distinct other and as being outside the dominant cultural
cartography, defined as the Hindu society. The term Hindu society itself
here becomes a synecdoche to indicate the notion of the Hindu nation
(a geopolitical space marked only for the Hindus) which parochialises
the very idea of India by subverting the secular, tolerant and pluralistic
conception of our polity (ibid.).
This has been done dexterously by a section of the Bollywood film
industry which has engaged in producing a set of Hindi films that project
in their settings, an overt delineation of the Hindu majoritarian cultural
space and discreetly construct its Muslim outsider. It would be crucial
here to understand whether the history of Hindi cinema itself has been
a monolithic tale of hostility against the Muslims? Or, is there any other
side to this entire narrative. Unlike the category of films that merely tend
236 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

to foment a sense of Muslim evil demonology, there have been films that
are embedded in secular liberal values which have presented mannerly
Musalmans who behave as ideal members of the society. These films,
through the representation of socio-cultural interactions between Hindus
and Muslims, have also portrayed the tolerant and eclectic character
of Indian society. The movie Amar Akbar Anthony (1977, Manmohan
Desai) emerges as a classic case that epitomises this phenomenon and
the character of Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) represents the good Muslim who
assimilates into the Indian pluralistic polity with an eclectic bent of
mind.2 Besides, there have also been films in which the basic contours
of a Muslim social space consisting of manicured minorities have been
portrayed (Deshpande 2007: 99).3
However, it would be interesting to understand as to how all this
changed and the discourse regarding the Muslim ‘other’ became the
dominant narrative in films such as those that would be examined in this
article. Such a shift itself must be understood from the perspective of the
increased marginalisation of Muslims in the 1990s, largely as a product
of the radicalisation of Hindutva ideology. Propelled by the dispute
with the Muslims over Ram janambhumi (birth place of Hindu deity
Lord Ram), coupled with the large-scale mobilisation of the powerful
higher caste Hindu middle class on the issue of reservation of jobs for
the lower castes, Hindutva was able to create a wider canvas for its anti-
Muslim campaign. Simultaneously, the Kashmir rebellion that emerged
2
A Bollywood blockbuster of 1977, Amar Akbar Anthony has become a classic of Hindi
cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Delighting audiences with its songs and
madcap adventures, the film follows the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in
childhood from their parents and one another. Beyond the freewheeling comedy and camp,
however, is a potent vision of social harmony, as the three protagonists, each raised in a
different religion, discover they are true brothers in the end. William Elison et al. (2016) in
their book, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation, offer a sympa-
thetic and layered interpretation of the film’s deeper symbolism, seeing it as a lens for
understanding modern India’s experience with secular democracy. Amar Akbar Anthony’s
celebration of an India built on pluralism and religious tolerance still continues to resonate
with the audiences. See http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504486
(accessed on 12 February 2016).
3
Both ‘majoritarianism’ and ‘minorityism’ are not absolute categories but contextual and
relative within the filmic discourse. While sociologically Hindus constitute the majority
community and Muslims the minority, yet within the closed world of a specific film or a
television serial, there could be a reversal of these categories. For instance, in the cinematic
world of movies, such as Mughal-e-Azam, Mere Mehboob, Chaudhvin ka Chand, Barsaat
ki Raat, Ghazal, Mere Huzoor, Mehboob ki Mehndi, Khuda Gavah, Sanam Bewafa, or
serials such as Henna, Alif Laila, et cetera, the Muslims clearly belong to the majority
while the Hindus constitute the minority. It is through the majoritarian Muslim gaze that
the minority Hindus are viewed and constructed (Kazmi and Kumar 2011: 186).
Kumar H.M. 237

with these events in a temporary parallel also contributed significantly

to this entire process. Thus, with the rise of the political temperature
that was tinged with an anti-Muslim agenda, the space for secular liberal
films that located themselves on an apolitical pedestal and presented
a balanced picture of a syncretic Indian polity also tended to become
shallow and thin. Yet another probable outcome of this particular
political climate may be seen in the constriction of Muslim social space
and the subsequent decline in the number of films which were made with
a purely Muslim ambiance as its setting. Henna (‘Henna’, 1991, Randhir
Kapoor), Sanam Bewafa (‘Unfaithful Beloved’, 1991, Saawan Kumar
Tak) and Khuda Gawah (‘God as Witness’, 1993, Mukul S. Anand)
remain as last manifestations of this genre.
What has followed since is a dogmatic construction of Muslims as
aliens which is deeply injected into the demotic consciousness through
a large number of films that picture a stereotyped image of Muslims,
mirrored in traditional Islamic attire, reflecting highly religious overtures
even in their actions in the secular premises of the public sphere. This
has happened especially in the case of those films that seem to have
overtly attempted to concur with the predominant political climate. Such
category of films which has been examined in this article have projected
the metaphoric figure of a Muslim, who is painted in the colour of
Islamophobia by showing Muslims as indulged in terrorism, organised
crime and treason. In this way, culture in its various forms serves as a
primary arena of contestation for national, religious and ethnic identity
(Lieber and Weisberg 2002: 273).
Films, in this regard, emerge as a crucial functionalist variable that
facilitates the examination of the complex interactions that take place
between culture and politics. In the light of all this, the present article
thus aims at understanding the ways in which Hindi cinema has portrayed
minority Muslims as a metonymy of fear and in a subtle manner have
tended to substantiate the linguistic and ideological lexicography of
Hindu majoritarianism. To demonstrate this, the article has selected those
movies which through their narratives have engaged in substantiating two
popular Hindu majoritarian platitudes. First one being, ‘all Muslims are
not terrorists but, all terrorists are Muslims’ which has been advocated by
films, such as Fanaa (‘Destroyed in love’, 2006, Kunal Kohli), Kurbaan
(‘Sacrificed’, 2009, Rensil D’Silva) and New York (2009, Kabir Khan).
The other platitude reads somewhat in these lines, ‘the identity of Muslims
is entirely determined by their religion (qaum), their religion is the source
of violence’ and it is this particular identity of Muslims that makes them
prone to become terrorists, dangerous criminals or traitors. Such a notion
238 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

has been championed by films, such as Sarfarosh (‘Fervour’, 1999, John

Matthew Matthan), Charas (‘cannabis’, 2004, Tigmanshu Dhulia) and
Shaurya (Valour, 2008, Samar Khan). The underlying agenda beneath
the two distinct genres of cinematic performances, represented by their
endorsement of these two different platitudes, is simple and patent.
A Muslim is the most prominent source of threat against whom we need
to have a constant national vigil and it is this very ontology of fear that
these two categories of films have sought to conjure up through their
cinematic performances.

Hindu Majoritarianism and the Construction

of Minority Muslim Identity
Hindi cinema and the subject of minority cultures have entered into a
complex interactive mode, wherein minority behaviour and the nature of
the filmic world are increasingly getting intertwined with each other.
Situating this phenomenon into the framework of agent-structure
discourse, it may be argued that cinema plays a vital role in not only
portraying the agent-structure question, but also critically engages in
shaping its contours. This is because the social world is a product of
human consciousness and is made up of thoughts, beliefs, concepts,
ideas, languages, discourses, narratives and patterns of inter-group
communications. The social world gains meaning through ideas and
beliefs of human agents and films, with their profound influence, are in
a position to manifest this connection between the objective material
world and the subjective world of ideas in a forceful way. The agent-
structure framework, thus, must be applied in a manner that would
facilitate our analysis of the collective identity and shared beliefs of
groups of people. Here, agent denotes human actions, contextualised in
the multiple folds of substructures that form the society which in turn
denotes a structure. For the purposes of our analysis, cultural minorities
are considered as the agents, the society which they inhabit is regarded
as the structure and films, by virtue of their pervasive appeal and being
the dominant form of popular culture and a kind of lingua franca of
contemporary times, have been viewed as the best source for the
manifestation of the interactions between the two (Barnett and Allen
2000: 145).
Further, it has been argued here that Hindi cinema’s portrayal of the
agent-structure discourse is heavily loaded in favour of the structure, as
it endeavours towards the advancement of the dominant ideas inbuilt in
Kumar H.M. 239

the core of the structure. When we situate this tilt in the context of one of
the most vulnerable sections of the society, that is the Muslim minority
in India, the need for deconstructing the role of cinema as promoter of
dominant culture assumes paramountcy. One key approach from which
the nature of such interactions must be understood is by examining the
sources of vulnerability of minorities emerging out of the hegemonic
tendency of the majority community of their homeland and the structured
way of ghettoisation done on the basis of a majoritarian agenda. Such
an endeavour is directed towards promoting a hegemonic culture that
would always keep the minorities at bay, beleaguered and in an inferior
position. Considering the conceptualisation of majoritarianism and
hegemonic culture, it can be noted here that they may be understood
from the prism of Italian neomarxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s
conception of hegemony, who was mainly concerned with the question
of the political functioning of ideology. For him:

the idea of hegemony was the means by which the ruling class gains the
ascent of those it rules. Hegemony is achieved in large part through the use of
ideology, by defining a reality in which the ruling class seems to have some
natural or inevitable right to be in charge. (Gramsci 1971: 45)

He further states:

The cohesion of the modern capitalist order stem primarily from hegemony,
the spiritual and cultural supremacy of the ruling classes. Through the
manipulation of the mechanisms of socialisation such as the media, the
churches, the schools, they had managed to foist their own values and beliefs
on an unsuspecting populace. (ibid.: 169–70)

The manifestation of such a kind of hegemony may be found in the

attempts of the majority ethno-religious groups who are also in control
of the institutions of governance to establish their hegemony through
various means like those of favourable legislations, judicial verdicts,
propaganda through State-run media institutions and the manipulation
of school textbooks. This hegemonic endeavour requires a systematic
othering of minority cultures by visualising them as aliens. In view of
such attempts at the bracketing of one group by the other, the question
of the legitimate rights of the members of minority culture as citizens,
their due share in the socio-cultural space and the issue of their identity
becomes critical.
As regards identities themselves, they are neither simply inherited
nor are they the ‘givens’ of a social set-up. Shaped and crystallised in a
240 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

specific political context, they are contextual and not essentialist (Kazmi
and Kumar 2011: 173). All identities are defined in relation, reference
and opposition to those who are performing the task of defining it.
Identity is not something that one is born-with; and something which
is natural, innate and in-built. Instead, it is constructed, imposed from
outside. There are those who are constructing, defining or imagining, and
there are those who are being constructed, defined or imagined. Those
who define are the ME, WE or US, whereas those who are the defined
are the YOU, THEM or OTHERS. More often than not, the dominant
discourse in any society is the majoritarian one, but this does not imply
that there is a homogenised majoritarianism in operation. It also cannot
be preconceived that there will be unanimity in the viewpoint of all the
members belonging to the majority community. Far from it, it is only the
dominant fraction or the fringe which appropriates to itself the honour
of representing the entire community. Thus, the sectarian voice of the
few supposedly becomes the voice of the entire community, which in
turn then seamlessly blends into the voice of the nation. It is from this
majoritarian perspective that the minorities are defined and imagined
(ibid.: 177).
Situating the issue of the cultural space and identity of India’s Muslim
minority in this context, it may be observed that it is the dominant
discourse embedded in the ideological framework of Hindu majoritarian
fringe that has largely contributed in constructing, defining and the
imagination of Muslim identity. This means that their identity is forged
in accordance to the nature of political consciousness of the dominant
majority, and hence, the very concept of cultural space for them is not
the one which they imagine, rather it is the one which is being imagined
on their behalf by the majority.4
Such sectarianism tends to cleave the cohesive multicultural edifice of
the Indian society and has led to the growing Hindu backlash in the name
of nationhood against the perceived Muslim enemy. Thus, modern India
has witnessed intense anti-Muslim political ideologies, discrimination,
marginalisation and violence that have implicitly or explicitly challenged
the place of its Muslims as full citizens of the polity (Metcalf 2007: 99).

4
Such majoritarian bias can be understood even by looking at some of the works done in
the field of social anthropology. For instance, Clifford Geertz explained everyday Muslim
behaviour in terms of the Islamic scriptures and myths, entirely neglecting the secular
factors shaping individual behaviour (Geertz 1968: 65, 110). Similarly, Ernest Gellner
reduces Muslims to mere products of their religion and has argued that fundamentalism is
strongest in Islam. For him, the real Muslims could not be other than Muslim extremists
(Gellner 1992: 4).
Kumar H.M. 241

In recent times, the metastatic impact of the vicious campaign against

the Muslim minorities that was unleashed by the Hindutva forces in the
name of love jihad, ghar wapsi (home coming) and the political acrimony
over beef eating is being witnessed in the growing intolerance in the
country. Such intolerance went to grave extents resulting in the lynching
of an innocent Muslim man, Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri village of
Uttar Pradesh by a frenzied mob.5 The growing intolerance has also
culminated in suppressing of the constitutionally ordained free speech
of the Indian citizens which has been evident by the assassination of
free-thinking authors and rationalists like Narendra Dabholkar, Govind
Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi.6

Islamophobia and the Making of Muslim

Identity in Hindi Cinema
A category of Hindi cinema has exhibited an overt majoritarian bias and
latent exclusionary symbolism towards the Muslims. This particular set
of films that constitute the key component of our analysis here have
sought to nurture the grand strategy of fomenting the cultural agenda of
Hindu majoritarianism. To accomplish this, these movies have attempted
at promoting discourses concerning the dominant culture, entirely
relegating the minorities into a state of oblivion. In this regard, the role
of these films in fabricating the past by creating disjunctive images of
Muslims and misrepresenting their actions as anti-national forms a
significant component of what has been called by Lichtner and
Bandyopadhyay (2008: 435) as a history war. In pursuit of its divisive
engagement in this history war, this section of Bollywood cinema has
constantly perpetuated the cliché of the inherently arrogant Muslims and

5
It was not just a Hindu mob killing a Muslim, it was an anti-national mob attacking India’s
plurality, diversity and inclusiveness. By killing Akhlaq, a 52-year-old Muslim ironsmith,
for having beef in his house, our collective Indianness and the freedoms it gives us were
attacked. It was also illustrated as to what India can become—a right-wing, intolerant
country where majoritarianism trumps basic human rights. This incident, then, was a
carefully scripted murder, a stage-managed political event intended to further polarise the
Indian people. In particular, it was intended to create a false anxiety amongst India’s
majority, and a climate of fear among the minorities. It is the very idea of India as a free
society that has been under attack through such incidents (Mehra 2015).
6
These killings should be seen as the canary in the coal mine. Secular voices are being
censored and others will follow. Hence, in today’s India, secular liberals face a challenge:
how to stay alive (Faleiro 2015).
242 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

the supposedly tolerant Hindus.7 This whole notion of the history war,
embedded in filmic narratives, is rather a culture war that has become an
integral part of the hegemonic agenda of the Hindu majority (ibid.).
Bollywood’s treatment of the emergence of such a war of cultures can be
seen in films that vehemently advocate the idea of the necessity of
drawing up cultural boundaries between Hindus and Muslims.
Kamal Haasan’s film Hey Ram (‘Oh God’, 2000, Kamal Haasan) is
one such instance which ingenuously projects a bold narrative of Muslim
bloodlust and Hindu trauma, juxtaposed with the notion of Mahatma
Gandhi’s politics of Muslim appeasement (Vasudevan 2002: 2918). In
the same way, another film, Pinjar (‘The Cage’, 2003, Chandra Prakash
Dwivedi) also attempts at glorifying in a latent manner the dominant
majoritarian notion in India that the Muslims are vindictive and barbaric
(Lichtner and Bandyopadhyay 2008: 452).
Apart from this, there is the category of films that provide a wider
canvas to this discourse and here, the debate shifts towards focus on a
good Muslim and a bad Muslim embedded within the closed domain
of the Hindutva majoritarian mindset. The use of the category of good
Muslims and bad Muslims must be visualised here from the perspective
of the two Hindu majoritarian platitudes mentioned at the beginning
of this article. First being the contention that all terrorists are Muslims
and the second being the argument that a Muslim’s qaum is the source
of his/her violent behaviour. The accentuation of these two platitudes
and the de-emphasising of the plural character of the Indian society, in
its narratives by a set of Hindi films, reflect upon the agenda of these
movies to create the binary classification of Muslim community into the

7
It is not the case that cinema in India has never addressed the question of the existential
predicaments of Muslims and the precariousness of the process of their identity formation.
In the case of Garam Hava (‘Hot Winds’, 1974, M.S. Sathyu), 1947: Earth (1998, Deepa
Mehta), Dev (2004, Govind Nihalani) and Parzania (‘Heaven and Hell on Earth’, 2005,
Rahul Dholakia), the existential predicament of Muslims that is engendered by the devious
acts of virulent Hindus has been portrayed. Parzania, for instance, boldly portrays
Hindutva’s anti-Muslim rage and depicts the haplessness of the Muslims as a beleaguered
and alienated minority. Its sharpness and penetrative way in narrating the plight of innocent
Muslims being routed by the communally blind-folded Hindus is evident by the fact that it
was not allowed to be released in Gujarat. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433425/
synopsis (accessed on 15 December 2015).
Kumar H.M. 243

good Muslim who is supposedly a covert threat and the bad Muslim who
is by and large an overt threat.8
Such a threat is weaved succinctly around the metaphor of religiously
fanatic medieval-minded Muslims, who are visually represented to
embody in them, the figure of terrorists that are being driven by a sense
of theological and monocultural paranoia. The pictorial narrative of
such a figure involves Muslims who wear the traditional attire (salwar
kameez), sport beards, carry AK-47 rifles and use Arab scarves. With
such projections, these films want to make sure that the religious identity
of the terrorist is doubted not at all by the audience (Deshpande 2007: 99).
Starting from films like Roja (‘Rose’, 1992, Mani Ratnam) till My Name
is Khan (2010, Karan Johar) in film after film, irrespective of the genre,
the recurring image of the Muslim is that of a terrorist. In fact, there is an
overkill of them so that in common consciousness Islam and terrorism
overlap. This is facilitated through the process of framing the terrorist
in a singularly religious idiom. It is his Muslimness—the mandatory
salwar kameez, the beard, reading the namaz, et cetera,—which is fore
grounded. At the other extreme, there are the suave, successful, urbane,
corporate executive types who are even more vicious (in films such as
Fanaa, New York and Kurbaan). So like the devil, beware of the Muslim
who can take any form (Kazmi and Kumar 2011: 184). By assigning such
an intense sense of threat to the image of a Muslim, Hindi films have
sociologically broadened the definition of Islamic terrorism. They have
reduced the discursive space accorded to Muslims, making them more
vulnerable to social ostracism, State violence and mob fury (Deshpande
2007: 98).
Further, let us consider this. In the film Fanaa, Zooni, a Kashmiri
Muslim girl played by Kajol, is pictured as a patriot and a passionate
Indian when she is shown killing her husband Rehan, member of a
Kashmiri militant outfit played by Aamir Khan to prevent him from
completing the mission of assembling of a Missile that would be used
by the terrorists against India.9 However, the entire film reflects to the
audience in a very subtle way, the debate over a good Muslim and a bad
Muslim in a totally different setting and in a perspective that depicts that
the Muslims themselves must carry the onus of culturing themselves to

8
It is not the case that Hindi cinema had not constructed stereotyped negative images of
Muslims prior to these political developments. Even anterior to this, Muslim portrayal in
Hindi cinema by and large had been communal in character (Deshpande 2007: 97).
However, in spite of the communal angle, the shift from the image of a Muslim from being
a civilian to a terrorist has only been the product of the developments in the 1990s.
9
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439662/synopsis (accessed on 12 December 2015).
244 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

be a good Muslim. All through, the film exhibits the Manichean divide
between these facets of Muslims and its denouement contains a message
delivered by Zooni (Kajol), who is shown training her son as how to
be a good Muslim.10 This piece of the film again symbolises the extent
of hegemonic hold of the Hindu majoritarian ideology upon Bollywood
cinema. Similarly, this whole discourse is placed in another different
terrain in the film Kurbaan which deals with a very loaded subject—
terror, Islam, America and the rest of the world. Here, Saif Ali Khan
as a smooth-talking, handsome professor plays the role of an extremist,
who is part of a sleeper cell of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that is
hatching a plot to bomb the New York subway. Unlike the stereotypes,
he is very polished and urbane, possessing all the essentialised features
that collapse under the terminology ‘bad Muslim’, except for the attire.
In this vein, Vivek Oberoi plays the face of the moderate, liberal Muslim
(the good Muslim), who seeks vengeance for his girlfriend’s death. He
has played the role of a news channel cameraman, Riyaaz Masood who
manages to infiltrate into the sleeper cell and foil their plans.11
The movie New York is yet another story of two good Muslims
attempting and succeeding in preventing a bad Muslim from carrying
forward his terror plans to a fruition point. The film begins in the United
States in 2008, with the arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) of Omar Aijaz (Neil Nitin Mukesh) after guns were found in the
trunk of a taxi cab he owned. Omar, a young Muslim man originally
from Delhi, is then taken into custody and interrogated by FBI Agent
Roshan (Irrfan Khan), also a Muslim man originally from South Asia,
living in the United States for 20 years. Omar then discovers that he was
set up by the FBI in order to force him to spy on a former college friend,
Samir Sheikh (John Abraham), whom he has not seen in seven years and
who the FBI believes is a terrorist. Omar agrees to help Roshan, rather
reluctantly, only to prove that both he and Sam are innocent. He begins
to stay with Sam and his wife Maya (Katrina Kaif) in their house, all the
while spying for the FBI.12
In the process, Omar learns from Sam that 10 days after 9/11, Sam was
arrested and detained for a period of 9 months as a suspected terrorist,
a charge which everyone including the FBI and Roshan, now agree was
incorrect. Though he was eventually released due to lack of evidence, the
10
Ibid.
11
See http://movies.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/20/review-kurbaan-is-bloody-smart.htm
(accessed on 13 December 2015).
12
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1328634/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn (accessed on
10 December 2015).
Kumar H.M. 245

impact of being detained and tortured permanently changed Sam in ways

which are difficult for those surrounding him to understand, leaving him
with feelings of deep resentment towards the FBI. Omar thus finds that
Sam ultimately resorted to plans for terrorism as a means of revenge. The
climax of the film rests upon the attempts of Maya, Omar and Roshan
to prevent Sam from committing an act of terrorism by telling him that
if he perpetuates towards terrorism, others will suffer as he has.13 The
story of New York is a visual narrative of as to how Muslims are pushed
into a contradiction generated from within that divides them as good
and bad Muslims and in the process imposes serious psychological and
sociological trauma upon them, making it difficult for them to reconcile
even their ontological existence with that of the brute phenomenological
external world.
Owing to this, it may be stated that Muslims, for almost last three
decades, drastically intensifying after 11 September 2001, are faced with a
task of living against themselves and have been persistently experiencing
a kind of misrecognition and alienation. This phenomenon exists and is
variously constitutive of the question of Muslim identity (Luxon 2008:
377–78). Such a situation has been engendered by the negative interface
that has been constructed between Islam and violence. It is evident in
instances such as the deep-rooted fetishism of the US security and
defense establishment, with the idea of the Muslim name itself being
tantamount to a case for germinating suspicions regarding an individual’s
potential terror connections. This is demonstrated in New York through
the character of one of Sam’s employees, Zilgai (Nawazuddin Siddiqui)
who is a former 9/11 detainee. Zilgai was eventually released due to lack
of evidence and has been having difficulty adjusting back to ‘normal’ life.
Zilgai emerges as the classic case where the connection between a Muslim
name and terrorism naturally gets constructed in the public imagination.
Hence, it may be stated here that the Muslim world has been imbricated
into a complex situation wherein the Muslims are engaged in a visceral
psychological battle. The phenomenon of a Muslim being the ultimate
source of all kinds of existential threats pushed the average Muslims to
restructure their life and practices in a manner to cope up with the vagaries
of Western imagination and the megalomaniacal fantasies of a fringe
group of extremists. A kind of battle within, created by the intellectual
confusion of the West, has put the Muslims in a perplexed predicament
regarding the definition of their identity. Such precariousness deepens,

13
Ibid.
246 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

as Muslims find themselves being defined from outside and are forced to
define themselves in accordance to others’ caprice.
All this has happened because of the false contention that Islam and vio-
lence are inextricably intertwined with each other; Islamic fundamentalism
is synonymous to terrorism and is a crime and this liaison can be untied
by separating the good or moderate Muslims from the bad or extremist
Muslims. Such a separation is fundamental for this contention because of
its argument that the sources of apocalyptical terrorism are rooted in Islam
and it is from there that it has to be purged. In this way, the global under-
standing of Islam has been imprisoned within the dyadic categorisation
of the moderate and extremist Muslims, enmeshing it within an internal
Manichean strife (Mamdani 2002: 766). Following this, the link between
Islam and terrorism has thus become a central media concern, resulting
in new rounds of culture talks. This talk has turned religious experience
into a political category, differentiating good Muslims from bad Muslims,
rather than terrorists from civilians. The implication has been undisguised:
whether in Afghanistan, Palestine or Pakistan, Islam must be quarantined
and the devil must be exorcised from it by a civil war between the good
Muslims and the bad Muslims (ibid.).
In India, which is a home to the largest Muslim population in South
Asia, this necessity of quarantining has assumed broader connotations
and has aptly fitted into the political agenda of a section of the majority
Hindu community, who have sought to radicalise a fascist idea of ‘Hindu
nation’ and associated its achievement to the exorcising of the stated
devil. This radical cultural theorising of the Islamic evil demonology
has pulverised the plural character of our society and has led to grievous
consequences in the form of the pogrom of Gujarat (2002) and the
Muzaffarnagar communal riots (2013). So owing to all this, scholars
across the disciplines have struggled to understand the religious
nationalism of South Asia, one of whose tragic outcomes has been an
accelerating violence against the Muslim minority. As regards India,
a striking character of recent public life has been the intensive use of
historical narratives to define the nature of India’s people and draw the
boundaries of citizenship (Metcalf 1995: 951).
Since 11 September 2001, questions—such as who is the legitimate
Indian citizen? What is Indian culture and who belong to it? Who are
aliens and the nation’s enemies?—have all become the dominant national
narratives. This is reflected in the attitude of Hindus towards Muslims
that appears to have adversely changed from one of accommodation to
that of a preposterous sense of veto. Epitomising this is the attitudinal
change from the popularity of Muslim artists to a bizarre repugnance
Kumar H.M. 247

towards Muslims in toto. This tendency, braced by nationalist overtones,

has become a significant feature of public mood in the Indian society.
A section of the Bollywood film industry which is a significant agent in
shaping popular culture in India has dexterously reflected this psyche,
with a clear penchant towards being apologetic to the prevalent popular
nationalist sentiment. In this regard, it has dispassionately endeavoured
at producing nationalist cinema with an unflinching commitment
towards the ideology of Hindu majoritarianism. The notion of the bad
Muslim as an affront to the nation (as in the case of Rehan played by
Aamir Khan in the film Fanaa), as compared to that of a good Muslim
(like Zooni played by Kajol in Fanaa or Riyaaz Masood played by Vivek
Oberoi in Kurbaan), who can be co-opted within the fold of majoritarian
ensemble, has become a popular symbol to validate this hegemonic
majoritarian agenda. Through such portrayals, Bollywood seems to have
discreetly knit into its narratives, the popular slogan prevalent among the
Hindu right’s political parlance that ‘all Muslims are not terrorists, but
all terrorists are Muslims’.
The above Hindutva shibboleth is very much open ended. When it
says that all Muslims are not terrorists, it implies that the good Muslims
should always be on the defensive and prove that they are not terrorists.
Significantly because clipped to this is the other side of the shibboleth
stating that all terrorists are Muslims, with which the Hindutva discourse
is creating a singularly synonymous symmetry between the terms
Muslim and terrorist. Meaning, even the good Muslims are not always
trustworthy, simply because they belong to the Muslim community and
can shift their roles for the sake of Islam at any moment. Thus, if the
bad Muslim in the shape of a terrorist, part of a non-State organisation,
is threat to the nation, the position of the good Muslim in the Hindutva
nationalist consciousness is also not very much different. The only point
of departure is that a terrorist is a proven enemy, who has violated the
obligations of being a citizen. Whereas in the case of a good Muslim,
who is a citizen of India and not a terrorist, the chances of him or her
becoming one or, turning out to be terrorist sympathiser, or betray the
nation by a devious engagement in any other facet of social or political
life are always omnipresent.
All this indicates towards one thing that has emerged as an unprece-
dented anomaly. This anomaly is the breakdown of India’s long-standing
multicultural edifice that was the key stone of its social architecture. This
debacle has been the offshoot of its tryst with modernity which was first
propelled by colonial transition and accentuated by the divisive poli-
tics of divide and rule employed by the British colonial administrators.
248 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

Colonial modernity not only questioned the positivist logic of India’s

traditions, but also branded its inherent diversities as subversive compo-
nents which were dormant and hence potentially capable of effecting
cataclysmic consequences. Indian society was branded as incapable of
constructive management of these differences because of the lack of
governmentality among Indians. Further, the orientalist ideas of differ-
ence and division from the colonial times considerably affected or,
perhaps infected the foundations of public life in India. In the postco-
lonial era, orientalism without colonialism has emerged as a headless
theoretical beast that is much harder to identify and eradicate because
it has become internalised in the practices of the postcolonial State,
theories of the postcolonial intelligentsia and the political actions of the
postcolonial mobs (Breckenridge and Veer 1993: 11). Majoritarianism
of an imperious Hindu order is the manifestation of such a phenom-
enon. Besides, a facet of this has also been the pervasive dissemination
of Islamophobia that has got deeply engrained into the heart of contem-
porary discourses in India on terrorism and global peace. Right from a
layman Muslim to a top Muslim leader, the stigma of being a terrorist or,
his aid, or, sympathiser, haunts each and everyone, carrying the brand of
being a Muslim.14
Situating this category of narratives in Bollywood cinema, it may be
observed that in films predicated upon a predominantly Hindu setting,
a good Muslim is always under the scanner and his or her fidelity is
persistently being watched over. Their credibility as rightful citizens of
the Indian State is constantly in a state of incertitude and their allegiance
is perceived to be not towards India, but towards Pakistan because it is
an Islamic State. This is very much in concurrence with the belief in the
dominant Hindutva discourse that a Muslim’s faithfulness is primarily
towards his or her religion and not towards the country. Thus, if a Muslim
police officer commits a mistake while engaging in any operation against
a Muslim criminal or terrorist, his folly is not considered as natural
human error but regarded as a deliberate inclination to save the people of
his own community (qaum).

14
Take the instance of M. Ajmal Khan, a senior counsel at the Madurai bench of Madras
high court in the Tamil Nadu province of India. The national daily The Hindu carried a
story on 28 September 2012 highlighting Ajmal Khan’s psychological trauma of being a
Muslim in India because of the prevalent syndrome of approaching every Muslim with
suspicion. In this piece, Khan has narrated as to how his elevation as the judge of the
Madras high court was blocked, only because his name was Khan and he was a Muslim.
This aptly explains the extent of influence of Islamic terror sophistry upon the Indian
psyche (Imranullah 2012).
Kumar H.M. 249

A reading of films, such as Sarfarosh, Charas and Shaurya,

demonstrate as to how Bollywood cinema in its narratives constructs the
image of such a good Muslim within the framework of the hegemonic
Hindutva discourse and paints the picture of Muslims as probable
traitors because of their fanatic loyalty towards Islam. In Sarfarosh,
Salim, played by Mukesh Rishi, is an honest and upright police
inspector, whose skills of gathering intelligence is considered to be one
of the best in the force. However, a failed attempt at nabbing Sultan
(Pradeep Rawat), a gangster, resulting in his escape and the death of
three police cops, entirely changes the image of Salim. Now his seniors
begin to suspect that since Sultan was a Muslim and so was Salim, the
police officer displayed deliberate callousness in performing his duties.
Salim is immediately stripped of his field duties and assigned a desk
job, as a mark of punishment.15 Sarfarosh also depicts the uncanny way
in which Hindi cinema makes metaphoric comparison of a Hindu with
the notion of nation and a Muslim as the nation’s outsider. Ajay Rathore
(Aamir Khan), the Hindu assistant commissioner of police, attempts
at reconciling Salim to help him in his duties. However, as Salim is
undergoing the trauma of being considered as a traitor, he refuses to be
part of any further work undertaken by Ajay. To this Ajay replies in a
vocabulary which is framed in a very popular Hindu majoritarian trope:
‘I do not need any Salim (Muslim) to protect my mulq (homeland)’.
Signifying that in the dominant Hindu imaginary, a Muslim constitutes
the alien who is outside the fold of the very idea of India, an idea that
assumes a predominantly Hindu overtone in the majoritarian narrative.16
Similarly, in the film Charas, assistant commissioner of police Ashraf
Khan (Uday Chopra) represents the vulnerable good Muslim, whose
loyalty is always under the scanner. Despite being an efficient officer,
he is not made part of an operation to get hold of an Afghan terror group
hiding in New Delhi. His senior, deputy commissioner of police (DCP),
Randhir Singh Rathore (Irrfan Khan), suspects that since the criminals
are Muslims, Ashraf might show softness towards them. Although Ashraf
sniffs this, he still importunes DCP Rathore to allow him to be the part
of the operation and when Rathore is unrelenting, Ashraf alleges that
Rathore doubts his credentials because of his Muslimness. In reaction
to this, Rathore asks a question as to ‘Mr Ashraf, why do you want to
become a martyr?’ In response, Ashraf states that ‘only to restore the
faith of my fellow countrymen on Muslims and their loyalty towards

15
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200087/plotsummary (accessed on 8 December 2015).
16
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200087/plotsummary (accessed on 8 December 2015).
250 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

the Indian State’. After this, he is made part of the team, but during the
operation, Ashraf fails to hold on to a terrorist who flees after jumping
from the top of a building. Ashraf could not catch up with him because he
suffers from vertigo. However, one member of the terror group is caught
by Rathore, in process of which he is seriously injured and hospitalised.
In his absence, Ashraf was in charge of the case but due to high-level
governmental pressure, the terrorist is let out. Hearing about this, DCP
Rathore accuses Ashraf that since he was a Muslim, he could not attack
the fleeing terrorist and also engaged in callous handling of the case of
arrested terrorist. Here, Ashraf’s identity as a police officer pitted against
a dreaded terrorist is completely erased and through the accusations of
Rathore, only his identity as a Muslim is accented. He was demonised by
his senior not for inefficiency in duty but for committing perfidy in love
with his own religion (Islam). Rathore dubs Ashraf as gaddar (traitor)
and accuses him by saying that ‘how could you have attacked your
own people (fellow religionists)’.17 This stance of DCP Rathore clearly
explains the majoritarian mindset in which Hindi cinema is rooted.
Yet another good Muslim in this genre is Javed Khan in the movie
Shaurya. Situated on a plot pertaining to the institution of Indian army
and its operations in the conflict-ridden Jammu & Kashmir, Shaurya
presents itself as a story in which the loyalty of Indian Muslim army
officers is constantly under the scanner of their fellow citizens who are
also their colleagues. The key subject of Shaurya is the court martial trial
on captain Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal), who is charged of killing his
commanding officer major Virendra Singh Rathore, as well as of revolt
and sedition. Major Siddhanth Chaudhary (Rahul Bose) is appointed
as captain Javed’s defence counsel and Major Aakash Kapoor (Javed
Jaffrey) is the prosecution lawyer. As captain Javed chooses to remain
silent, his conviction seems to become an expected offshoot of the court
martial.18 However, what is critical is not the triangular relationship
among the accused, the defence counsel and the prosecution. Rather,
it is the role of brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh (Kay Kay Menon) which
has to be put into context here. Rudra Pratap emerges in the film as an
epitome of how experiences with one person of the Muslim community
factors deeply in shaping an individual’s approach towards viewing the
entire community.
Brigadier Singh is harbouring an anti-Muslim prejudice that makes
him consider all Muslims as a major threat to the security of the country.

17
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410952/plotsummary (accessed on 5 January 2016).
18
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1101665/ (accessed on 18 January 2016).
Kumar H.M. 251

He is plagued with such a mindset because his domestic help who was a
teenaged Muslim boy named Jamaal had not only raped his daughter but
also burnt his entire family alive. Now, the brigadier is seeing Jamaal in
all Muslims and such a psychological conditioning also strongly operated
while he was performing his duties as an army officer. In one such
instance, Rudra Pratap abetted and encouraged the torture and killing of
innocent Muslims of a village in Kashmir by Major Virendra Rathore,
who also nurtured a deep-seated sense of hatred towards Muslims.
During Major Siddhanth’s investigations, it was revealed that captain
Javed had killed Major Virendra for the crimes and excesses that he had
committed on the Muslim civilians of the village while in uniform, done
in complete connivance with brigadier Rudra Pratap who had abused
the special powers granted to the army under the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act. On this count, the court martial arrives at the conclusion that
the actual culprit was brigadier Rudra Pratap and not captain Javed. The
critical aspect of this entire story is the semantic arrogance with which
brigadier Rudra Pratap defends his criminal deeds as necessary actions
in the name of national interest, while he was being charged of criminal
indulgence in the court martial proceedings. As captain Javed is proved
to be innocent, brigadier Rudra Pratap argues as to why even a good
Muslim should not be defended:

you want to save Javed? Do you know his qaum (community), the inherent
source of his identity that is derived right from his birth. This inherent identity
runs in his veins and has smeared in his blood. His loyalty is only toward his
community and unfortunately their community is full of poison and this
poison runs in his blood. Their community is inscribed in all terror activities
and the solution is that the entire community must be obliterated.19

The semiotic signification of Rudra Pratap’s defence is simple

and patent. Muslim identity is essentialist and their allegiance is only
towards Islam and not the country. Besides, the idea of India that is
framed in terms of the discourse of nationalism in the narratives of
Shaurya considers only the Hindus as the rightful claimants of its spatial
anthropology and regards Muslims unfit to become the sociological and
political coeval of that very idea. Thus, be it a bad Muslim or a good
Muslim, for the category of Hindi cinema that has been discussed here,
Islamophobia seems to be an inevitable phenomenon of the collective

19
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1101665/ (accessed on 18 January 2016).
252 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(2)

experience of the ‘Hindu Nation’, inhabited by the ‘we’ Hindus and the
alien Muslim ‘others’.20
Here, it may be noted that the politics of Muslim identity itself is
based on a religious rhetoric and an impulse towards accentuating
majoritarian hegemony. As part of this hegemonic strategy, the macro-
social identity of Muslims based on religion has factored deeply in
shaping the narrative on the politics of Muslim identity in the public
sphere. This narrative tends not only to reduce Muslim identity in
terms of mere sociological and anthropological expression of their
religion, subsequently obfuscating other aspects of their everyday life in
determining their identity, but also through arguments, speech and social
transactions, seeks to portray the Muslims as the nation’s other who are
juxtaposed to the non-Muslim national self. Wrapped in theologocentric
attire, such majoritarian perspectives on Muslims are yet to graduate from
its self-imposed knowledge deficit of viewing the Muslim community
from only the religious perspective. The major product of this deficit has
been the fusion of the definition of the socio-cultural and political space
occupied by the Muslims with the realm of their theological beliefs.
Thus, majoritarianism has emerged as a

form of power that immediately applies to everyday life which categorises

the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognise and which
others have to recognise in him. It is a form of power that makes individuals
the subjects. (Foucault 1982: 781)

Conclusion
The crisis of identity and dilemmas of accommodation among minorities
emanates out of the very predicament of sharing cultural spaces with the
majority and the precariousness of preserving their own cultural identity.
The problem gets compounded, if they have been demonised by a
20
However, it must be noted that operating in a multi-religious society, identity formation
through films and tele-serials may take any of these forms: (i) Projecting a hermetically
sealed and exclusive world where there exists a homogenous, monolithic community
while shutting out all others. This could be a closed Hindu world or an equally shut
Muslim world. (ii) While selectively allowing the intrusion of the minority community,
yet ensuring that their peripheral existence does not disturb the hegemonic position of the
dominant community. This is done by co-opting the marginalised into the world of the
dominant community. (iii) An apparently pluralistic set-up where fully homogenised
communities happily co-exist with each other despite fundamental differences (Kazmi
and Kumar 2011: 186).
Kumar H.M. 253

hegemonic majoritarian order which also renders them to a ghettoised

existence by declaring the minorities as aliens in majoritarian language
and narratives. In India, this has been the product of the majoritarian
cultural assertiveness regarding the superiority of Hindus and its
portrayal of the Muslim minority as the cultural other. Such majoritarian
narcissism and the denigration of minority culture are also grounded in
the portrayal of Muslims as a metonym of fear by declaring them as the
ultimate threat to the very foundations of Hindu culture.
The life line of this majoritarian agenda is the hegemonic vocabulary
that describes a persistent contest between the native Hindu and the
Muslim outsider. This is constantly portrayed in various forms of popular
culture and the notion of the dominance of Hindu culture coupled with
the feeling of Muslims as being outside its fold is represented as a type
of collective experience in popular mediums such as films and television
soaps. In today’s India, cinema, arguably one of the dominant forms of
popular culture, has proved to be an ideal platform to theatre this dyadic
contest conceived by the Hindu majoritarian ideology. The dichotomy
has been presented in Bollywood cinema by putting the categories of
Hindu culture and Muslim culture into a kind of Manichean rivalry
wherein Hindu culture, practiced by the native self, is projected as
good and the Muslim culture, as the way of life of the alien other, is
represented as bad. By displaying a complex process of negotiation
between these two aspects of Manichean symbolism, Hindi films have
sought to hoist the dominant ideology of Hindu majoritarianism on a
reified and unsuspecting populous.

Acknowledgements
This is a revised version of the article ‘Metonymies of Fear: Islamophobia in Hindi
Cinema’ presented at the FILM AND MEDIA 2014: Visions of Identity—Global
Film and Media, The Fourth Annual London Film and Media Conference, held
at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK during 26–28 June 2014.
I thank the participants for their comments from which I benefitted
immensely. Thanks are also due to the anonymous referees of the journal for
their insightful reading and valuable suggestions that I hope have added to the
quality of this writing.

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